OK I installed Cobl Races/TNR/Cosmetic Rez yesterday. Got it all up and running nicely. The NPCs all look different. Will take some getting used to but I like it!

The problem I'm having were the immediate changes I saw to my character. I don't care about changes to the NPCs but I didn't like the changes to my character.

Here are some befores - pretty skin - light, luminescent and smooth with very little imperfection (especially take note of the forehead area):

http://i44.tinypic.com/fe0yes.jpg - smooth and pretty
http://i40.tinypic.com/2a7zs40.jpg and http://i44.tinypic.com/2ykz0au.jpg - Clear smooth skin in all lighting

Now the problem. AFTER installing Cobl Races/Cosmetic Rez here is my poor gal:
http://i39.tinypic.com/6r4zlc.jpg -- blotchy and tanned look - uneven around forehead above eyebrows
http://i40.tinypic.com/242h1mr.jpg
http://i44.tinypic.com/t9xh91.jpg -- this is NOT the Exnem I remember. I did load Eyecandy on top of this - I got an even more tanned character, but the regular Eyecandy body was there.

Why is this happening? I liked my character much better before this mod install. I tried deactivating both cobl with races, etc. and cosmetic rez but it did not remove these textures.

Please help with your advice!

Did you install the base of Cobl_Cosmetics_Res first - and then the Exnem resources that comes with it?

EDIT: Wait, that shouldn't matter in your case as the Cobl Res Exnem resources doesn't affect Wood Elves.

Cobl Races is only adding new eyes and hairs has a option to wood elf it does not change the face texture, or affect the body textures.

What has happened is that you changed your eyes, and once you done this all your hard work that you spent into making your face is lost and skin tone is lost.

Since you upgraded your character from vanilla to cobl eyes. This reset many of tweaks that you did.

Has for Tan Body once again you need to retweak your skin tone has well from character menu

My advice

Ugh. Well I can add other hair and eye mods with no problems to my skin tone.

And I thought the skin texture changes you make only affect your face (not the body).

I think as much as I'd like to use TNR and these other mods that come with Cobl, I'm going to remove them so I can have my character back to normal.

I will try to follow the uninstall instructions but I've already had problems backing out since my body is not changing back to Vanilla.

If you are using OBMM to uninstall those mods and other mods are installed with overlapping files, OBMM will not uninstall those files. The only way to "revert" is to reinstall the mods with the texture files that you want. I do not understand how the skin tone was affected, unless the mods changed the meshes or textures for Wood Elves.

That's why you use BAIN.

Yeah...I love that utility. Organization! Really, if you are using many overlapping mods BAIN is a huge help. It does prioritized installation, so you can always tell which version of a file is installed. The highest priority mod always wins.

BAIN - I've never heard of it. I'll look into it. (edit: i see it's built into WB? I see no basics on how to use it to monitor my issues - could someone please point the way?)

My biggest fear is that my vanilla meshes were overwritten. Right now I can't even get Oblivion to start with just the basic Cobl installed - my whole thing is borked. Cobl - Glue and Cobl - SI now somehow ended up sharing the same loading slot. What the heck. I wish I could just revert my whole machine to earlier today and forget about the whole thing. grrr...

BAIN is Wrye Bash's Installer. If you have a more recent version of Wrye Bash, you already have it. Just click on the installers tab. It will create a folder \%FolderContainingYour"Oblivion"Folder%\Oblivion Mods\Bash Installers. When you drop archive or folder version of mods into that folder, they will show up in the Bash "Installers" tab. The only requirement is that the archives or folders (a.k.a projects in BAIN) are packaged nicely. You can find more information on my website: http://sites.google.com/site/oblivionpoinfo/installation/mods/bain-installation. In order to start moving your mods from OBMM to BAIN, use OBMM's convert to archive function (right-click on an OMOD.) Do not bother with the OMOD conversion information. Switching over completely can take a while. Maybe just try exporting your cosmetic mods. Those tend to conflict a lot, and you probably care more about which face texture is loaded than other conflicts.

That time slot conflict thing might be a result of installing mods with OBMM while leaving "lock times" on in Wrye Bash. Installing with both utilities at the same time is doable, but a little tedious. I still use both, but I only install non-conflicting music packs with OBMM. They are big, and OMOD compression is really nice. Plus, I rarely reinstall them.

Edit: If Oblivion is not starting, you probably have a missing master or something like that. Check for red boxes in Wrye Bash. Look out for orange boxes too. Those are disordered masters. Just check you COBL installation, and make sure you did not miss anything. Are you using BOSS? Those type of installation errors would be reported in the BOSS log.

When one has Wrye Bash, shouldn't it also be possible to copy the face settings from an older, unaffected savegame over into one saved after all those changes were applied and would retain one's pretty face back (if that isn't prevented by replaced textures or altered race defaults)?
Or am I missing something?

As for the last picture, that's not looking like Exnem to me either. Something's just shouting "Vanilla body" into my head when I look at it, the texture's just looking... unusual, low-quality to me somehow. But I of course could be wrong with this, being a user of TFF since the beginning.

That should work, but if her character was not tweaked in-game, then that is irrelevant. I'm still confused about what happened if no in-game tweaks were made and face textures were not replaced??

I didn't think about copying the face settings - I can try that. However I am 99% sure my settings are the same as before (I have chargen with numbers installed and didn't notice changes but I'll go look).

I did get what looks like the vanilla body shape back - it just looks tons more orange to me. Unfortunately I don't have an unclothed image of a vanilla woodelf. Just so you can see I'm not crazy... http://i40.tinypic.com/6yppg5.jpg is an image of the non-neckline were like before I installed and uninstalled Cobl Races/TNR/Cosmetic Rez. http://i40.tinypic.com/2m81mcw.jpg what it's like after. There's definitely discoloration especially on the forehead with the orange tan thing happening.

If I have to I'm going to uninstall Oblivion, wipe out everything and start all over. I hate to do that but this really bugs me and I'd love to figure out how to fix it without resorting to that extreme measure. After deactivating those mods things should be normal again and they're not.

Edit: Tom thanks for the Bain info - I'm going to read the entire thing and see if I can start applying it in these issues.

It just looks like the face settings have been reset, not a texture replacement. Removing the plugin should fix that. Did you rebuild your bashed patch after removing the COBL plugins? I guess that that is what Corpepc was talking about. If you saved with the altered face settings, then removing the plugins would not be enough. However, you should be able to restore the face from a previous save using Wrye Bash's face import/export feature. Try that before taking the time to reinstall. Remember, you should import the face from the source plugin (the older save) into a dummy plugin, and then export the face to the target save from the dummy plugin.

OK to answer all your questions:

* I deactivated the plugins (Cobl/TNR Races/Cobl Cosmetics Rez) which I installed today - those were the only ones.
* Yes I rebuilt the bashed patch (several times)
* I'm working with a test save that I made before installing Cobl. So yes it's a previous save.

I'm pretty stumped. OK I didn't know that skin tone changes affected the entire body. However, things should have been ok with my good save, right? But it's not - the neckline and dark pictures were taken from the good save after I removed everything, so it's not the same as before. But I'll go make the check on my earlier saves anyway.

OK I checked my earlier saves - the chargen numbers are all the same. I even checked the sewer exit save. There's a definite difference that shows up on even that first - a more tan and irregularly marked face - no longer fresh looking and even-skin tone. I like to take a lot of screenshots and am really particular about the face so this is why I'm being so finicky.

Could it be possible that Cobl Cosmetic Rez overwrote vanilla meshes and textures? When I installed it, it was just a bunch of textures and meshes in a folder and I hooked a script in another thread to get it to work for me in OBMM so that I could activate/deactivate it. That's the only thing that I did that was out of the ordinary. I'm just really confused because the problem exists with prior saves after it's been uninstalled.

Thanks to everyone who's looked at this and replied with help and ideas.

Edit: Also Corepc said "What has happened is that you changed your eyes, and once you done this all your hard work that you spent into making your face is lost and skin tone is lost." - I think this is my big question (same as last paragraph) could it happen after I uninstalled all the Cobl mods, that some changes could be intact, since I still see this orange/+blotchy skin even if I go back to much earlier saves?

It should not effect vanilla head meshes and facial textures. The cosmetic resource pack contains only custom hair meshes/textures, eye textures, and some custom meshes for custom races. What I can tell you is, reinstall body replacer and facial textures(if you're using any) and see the problem persist.

Remember, vanilla meshes and textures will still be in the BSA files, the mod added files will be in folders in your data folder. Removing ALL mods will revert everything back to vanilla therefore....BUT the player character face is kept in the savegame file, hence WB's import/exprt face date

Good luck!

If you have really uninstalled all mods that replace vanilla race meshes and textures files, then the Vanilla meshes and textures are appearing in game. They are packed in BSA files, so installing mods does not get rid of them or anything. It seems that you may have uninstalled the meshes or textures that that save was made with, so try reinstalling those.

Well I'm glad LFact and Tom told me to look at turning off/on my other texture mods. The ONLY other two I had turned on were Natural Faces and Danis13's Patch for Natural Faces. I have been able to turn these off in the past to get the vanilla face. I hoped an uninstall and reinstall of these could fix.

Instead, after deactivating any mod that has to do with face/body/hair/eye and any texturing (all I have left active are a few house mods, Natural Environs, and a few Better mods (better rings, better amulets...etc.) I get http://i43.tinypic.com/2ldk6tk.jpg! I'm horrified but am hoping that maybe someone will finally recognize my problem and let me know what I need to do now. I'm assuming this "texture" is underlying and that my Natural Faces was trying to cover up this but that the underlying darkness was showing through.

Weird. I have no idea how you got all those issues really, but one thing that hasn't been mentioned: are you using http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=10724? It's pretty much a necessity when using texture replacers. It also comes with BAIN and OBMM (BSA Redirection).

ArchiveInvalidation Invalidated

This is a dummy file, nothing in there but a texture, I think (havent looked into it)
Place it in the data folder, its a bsa file.

Copy it name and put it into the oblivion.ini "sarchive=..." on first place before all the other bsa'S

now the important part, get yourself the file tools, and set the timestamp for the texture and mesh folders up to date (inclusive subfolders), this is necessary because oblivion checks what texture mesh etc. to take by its date (newest is taken), thats why your PC body was crap, this texture got a newer date, the exnem is still there.

Oblivion configuration can be a real pain in.... but its worth it! :clap:

With ArchiveInvalidation Invalidated you don't have to set timestamps or have any hassle at all - just install it and you're set. It's by far the best and simplest way of handling archive invalidation. That's why its surname is invalidated.

OMG haha this has turned into such a headache. OK I'll try using that and will see what happens. I just hope that I can put all this learning about this problem to use and help someone else in the future.

Oh btw speaking of Archive Invalidation - I have a .txt file I added some textures too (last week before this new problem happened) and also I had to set in: OBMM BSA redirection => BSA alteration and had to hit the Textures checkbox. I'm not sure what mod this was for but I can look into it. Should I reset OBMM to BSA redirect when I use this ArchiveInvalidation Invalidated?

Doesn't Wrye Bash handle that automatically? If you right-click on the "installers" tab, just make sure BSA-redirection is checked. I believe it is checked by default. There is not reason to mess with an Archive Invalidation text file. Make sure BSA redirection is checked in OBMM too. I think it also uses that setting by default. I do not think this is relevant to this particular problem since you were already using these tools to handle installation.

Edit: wording

When you're using one of the other methods, BSA Redirection or BSA Alteration, you should not use an ArchiveInvalidation.txt file anymore. I think you even have to delete "all" of these, as there can be more than one in different folders depending on mods telling you how to create one or doing that automatically. And they will only confuse the engine when other methods are also in use. You can't invalidate a file that isn't inside the archive after all. I don't know how the game will react to such an attempt.

So you did use BSA "Alteration" once, because a mod readme told you to? Then it might be useful to know which mod that might have been.
BSA Alteration does "alter" the contents of the original BSAs, so if OBMM didn't provide you with the option to restore the old files from backups, you might ultimately have to reinstall Oblivion.

For the records, Wrye Bash's Replacers tab used to be able to automatically create the ArchiveInvalidation.txt file, ArchiveInvalidationInvalidated uses the same dummy-BSA approach as does OBMM's BSA-Redirection, and if I'm not mistaken, also does the BSA-Redirection option in Wrye Bash.
Nothing of this is mysteriously happening on its own. Every option you have to trigger yourself. BSA-Redirection however is a one-time-only solution. Once the dummy BSA is in place there's no need to even think about Archive Invalidation ever again.